Teddy Mueller’s Blog

The only real difference between animal and human intelligence is one of relative variations in the structure of brains and of experiences in different environments. So far as emotional thinking goes, wild animals are capable of every emotion that a human being is proud of, even of deliberate sacrifice for its young or for a friend. They do these things without hope of reward in this life or beyond. People who are fond of dogs, cats, parrots, horses and other domesticated animals know something of the ability of these animals to have an active mental life and vigorous emotions.

So come to the zoo and get straightened out on your psychology. You will quickly learn that you have to discriminate between different species of animals representing different degrees of intelligence. You will observe that even specimens of the same species differ in intelligence, just as human beings do. You cannot treat them all alike, you cannot expect them to act alike. But no matter how much their intelligence may differ from the human or among themselves, you will not find any metaphysical gap between their senses and their reasoning powers. You will discover that speculative philosophers who assert the opposite do not exhibit a very high degree of observation and of logical reason, the popular prejudice to the contrary notwithstanding.

A philosopher who argues that since we can know the world only through our senses, therefore we can never know the real world outside us as it is, imagines that his mother is not real, and that his mother did not know whether she gave birth to the child itself or only to a subjective phenomenon of a child. Our senses, and the senses of the animals may not always be reliable, but such as our senses are in the normal state and for all practical uses, they can distinguish a Democrat from a Republican, a Socialist or a Communist, and they don’t go far wrong if used carefully. And so can an animal distinguish between a real lion, a stuffed lion, and a stuffed shirt. And when the lion eats the philosopher, there is no doubt about the reality of the fact and its results.

Thinking such things over carefully, you will probably sympathies with me when I say, after 40 years of philosophical study, that the more I see of certain philosophers, the better I like animals. ME* TOOO***..><..^ *

the milwaukee-county-zoo*